My first instinct was to run. I even turned and took three steps. But then I stopped myself. The man was obviously dead. From the smell he had been there awhile. A killer wouldn’t stay around the body, I thought. And I’d seen worse. Less than a year before, I’d searched a room full of slaughtered men, looking for the fingertip that Fearless had gotten shot off.

The man was partly on his side, so I didn’t have to move him much to get the wallet out of his back pocket. There was a driver’s license for a Lawrence Wexler.

“Hercules,” I said to no one.

He was big enough for a Hercules. Well over six feet and bulky with both muscle and fat. And he was bloated from many hours of being dead in that heat. There were bruises and burns all down his right arm. I suppose he gave up whatever information it was that he had before the left arm had to be mutilated.

The wallet was real alligator. Even back then it had to cost fifty dollars or more. It held three twenty-dollar bills and a packet of business cards bound together by a rubber band. There were liquor stores, furniture movers, and Madame Ethel’s Beauty Supply among the cards. There were also six business cards for the same man—Lawrence Wexler. It seemed that he was a salesman for Cars-O-Plenty, a used automobile business.

My stomach started churning and I ran to find a bathroom. I told myself to wait, but the call of nature was too strong. A door leading from the kitchen went into a small toilet. Seated there on the commode, I placed the wallet on the floor before me. Madame Ethel’s sounded familiar to me, but at first I couldn’t place it. Then I remembered that Kit had done a delivery for that company.